Molecular building blocks provide unique opportunities as ultimately-scaled electronic components offering tailored functionalities such as, for example, non-linear transport, rectification, conductance switching, hysteresis or negative differential resistance. These intrinsic functionalities are determined by the chemical design and some of them interact with molecule-extrinsic properties such as voltage, electric field, light, pH, etc. The large variety of quantum mechanical mechanisms controlling transport would in principle allow for next-generation electronics, applicable to standard information technology, quantum and neuromorphic computing, and beyond. Furthermore, molecular compounds can act as selective sensors for sensing applications as well as feedback, storage and acceptor systems in molecular factories and artificial biological systems.
However, a main obstacle to the implementation of such molecular components for the above-mentioned purposes is the extremely small size of molecules of the order of one nanometer (10−9 m) which makes contacting of a single molecule or small ensembles of molecules in a well-oriented way and at a well-defined anchoring site an incredibly challenging task, in particular if multiple contacts have to be reliably established on technology-relevant length scales.